Always Read the Label
by Frost Mausoleum
Summary: Naruto finds something interesting among the pots of instant ramen on the shelves of the store. 'Instant Family - Just Add Water' What could possibly go wrong? ...Well.
1. Chapter 1

There was only one store Naruto knew of that would sell him his groceries without raising the prices to stupid heights. Him and the shopkeeper had an unspoken agreement, however - if someone saw him in the shop, he would get kicked out. That was why, just after 10pm, when most of the streets were clear, an orange-clad gennin was stealthily making his way down the street.

He breathed a sigh of relief as he slipped through the door into the fluorescent-lit shop. The old man grinned at him from behind the counter. Half an hour after closing time. He had been expected.

"Hey, Haruki-san," Naruto said, grinning. The old man look at him, but didn't reply. Naruto got the message, and said nothing more. If he replied, the old man would be acknowledging Naruto's presence. Still, there was a twinkle in his eye. No matter how much he pretended to hate him, Naruto knew that there was a soft spot somewhere in Haruki-san's heart for him.

Maybe.

He skipped the vegetables, heading straight for the ramen instead. The crates of fruit and veg leered at him as he walked past - Naruto knew that they weren't _really_, but he could feel it all the same. Cold, cold eyes again. The third hokage had sat him down once he was given his own apartment, and had explained to him the importance of eating healthily, etc, etc. For once, he had listened, eager to please and not wanting his new home taken away from him. He wouldn't be able to stand the orphanage again.

The next day, clutching his allowance, he had gone to the grocers. He had explained the situation to the kind lady behind the counter, and she had told him that she would pick out some good ones for him.

It had costed him nearly half of his month's allowance and they were all rotten; he stuck to tinned foods and ramen after that.

And that was were he was headed now - ramen, ramen, ramen. Cheap and delicious. What better food was there?

He grabbed two pints of milk out of the chilled shelves as he walked past.

And there it was.

The ramen shelf.

After checking for new flavours, an action that bore fruit very occasionally, he picked out his old favourites. Miso ramen (of course, but it wasn't a patch on Ichiraku's). Chicken ramen. Pork ramen. All his favourites. He dug to the back of the shelves - he had acquired a habit after a villager had told him that the world was going to end when he was young. He had been terrified for a while until finding a solution. He would pick the ones with the use-by dates that were furthest away. The world couldn't end if his ramen was still in date. He knew it wouldn't end, now, but it was too deeply ingrained in him for him to stop. And it was comforting, the tradition he had made of doing this now.

If he hadn't done it, he wouldn't have seen the pot at the back. Blue and white, unlike the others, which were green and white or red and white or yellow and white.

His heart skipped. A new flavour?

But when he pulled it off the shelf, careful not to knock any others off in the process, he read the top label with confusion. It didn't say Nissen Instant Ramen, like the others did.

It said 'Instant Family'.

A misprint? A really weird one, if that. Under ingredients, it just said 'Up to you'. No nutritional values, no storage information. It had a use-by date (one week from use? How did that work?), however, and instructions for use. Where the others told you how to cook it, this one was different.

"Remove lid. Pour in lukewarm water up to the measurement (make sure it isn't boiling; you don't want to burn your new relatives), and then mix in a drop of your blood for each family member. Let it cool for 3 minutes. Be sure to leave room for your new family to emerge."

His heart sped up. Could it be...shaking his head, he dismissed any thoughts of it actually working from his mind. He held on to it, however, and looked at the back of the shelves for more. He found one other.

Before he could think it through, he gathered up the rest of his shopping and took it to the counter. Haruki-san didn't spare the Instant Family containers a second glance as he scanned them, and they came up the same price as the normal ramen.

Clutching the bag as if it would fly away, Naruto walked back to his apartment, deep in thought. If this worked, _if this worked_, he wouldn't have to be alone any more.

It took him longer than usual to get to sleep that night.

**A/N - Damn it. This was supposed to be a one shot, but I guess that isn't happening XD If you have any ideas for how this could go, please review, because I'm flying blind here. **


	2. Chapter 2

Monday morning.

11am.

Naruto Uzumaki was still in bed.

He didn't notice the alarm, even though it had been on snooze for the last 3 hours.

He didn't notice the people in the apartment next to his, yelling at him to "Shut that blasted alarm off!" After half an hour they had given up.

He didn't notice the silver-haired jounin that had just appeared on his window ledge. He didn't notice as he rolled the window up, and he didn't notice as he entered the apartment. He didn't notice as the man walked over to his bed, crouched in front of him, and said worriedly, "Naruto, is something wrong?"

He didn't notice as his sensei scooped him up in his arms, bridal style, after several unsuccessful attempts to rouse him. He didn't notice as the man jumped over the rooftops, and he didn't notice as he was rushed into the hospital.

He didn't notice any of these things, because he was sitting on top of the fourth hokage's monument head.

In a hospital bed, a Naruto clone slept peacefully on, completely unaware of the panic it's creator was causing his team mates.

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Kakashi Hatake had been mildly worried when Naruto hadn't shown up for training. While the blond was loud-mouthed and impulsive, he was also very dedicated, and definitely not the kind to skip on training. He had his dream, after all, of becoming hokage and being acknowledged. So he told Sakura and Sasuke to head to the training grounds without him and start sparring. He assumed that Naruto had just overslept, so the jounin had intended to drop by and wake him up.

He decided to ignore the fact that the gennin had not been late to training even once in the five months that they had been a team.

He could hear the alarm when he was crouching outside the window. He could also see Naruto, lying in bed. 'How on earth can he sleep through that?' Kakashi wondered as he pushed open the window.

Normally, the entrance of another person into Naruto's apartment would have woken him up by now. Kakashi tried not to dwell on this as he walked over to the slumbering boy, making sure to make noise as he approached him. You'd have to be an idiot to startle a sleeping ninja.

Still no response. He was getting concerned by this point. Crouching in front of him, Kakashi studied his face. He looked fine - peaceful, even. No sweating, no flushing, and he didn't seem in any kind of particular discomfort. Naruto had explained that he never got ill to the other gennin, when a stomach bug was going round the village. "Ramen gives you amazing powers!" he had exclaimed, grinning, and the other gennin had just sighed. Kakashi suspected that the Kyuubi had something to do with Naruto's good health, because it wasn't like the boy had had the healthiest lifestyle.

The apartment Naruto lived in was rather bare. A ramen poster on the wall, a couple of potted plants in a half-baked attempt to make the place a bit less lonely. A calendar, a bed, a table. A fridge, a kettle, a neat pile of ninja tools, and some dust, too. It had the look of a home that was inhabited by someone who wanted to keep it clean but didn't quite know how. A blue and white pot of instant ramen rested on the table, although it was untouched. He wondered if it was from the night before, and if Naruto had eaten anything since he had seen him in Ichiraku's on Saturday.

Or maybe the ramen was there in preparation for his breakfast. He couldn't imagine Naruto not eating ramen unless something was really wrong. And he didn't get ill.

But as he crouched in front of the boy, Kakashi reasoned that there was a first time for everything. His lack of illness up until this point didn't make him immune to everything.

"Naruto, is something wrong?" No response.

Kakashi nudged him when he didn't respond to noise. Nothing. He pinched him, blew in his ear. He even untied the boy's headband, which had been left on in his sleep, figuring that Naruto would respond to _that_. He was strangely protective of the hitai-ate, even though they were easily replaced.

Nothing, nothing, nothing.

By this point Kakashi concluded that something was very wrong. He scooped the boy up in his arms and headed straight for the hospital over the roofs of Konoha. In his arms, the boy who reminded him so much of Obito didn't even stir.

'I couldn't save you then,' Kakashi thought. 'But there is no way in hell that I'm neglecting what's left of you now, Obito.'

The boy had even worn goggles, for god's sake.

He would die before he let anything happen to him.

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Naruto had been up on the hokage's head since Sunday morning. His sleep the night before had been fitful, plagues with images of a little boy standing alone while others sneered at him, threw things, _ignored _him. He woke frequently with cries of 'demon' in his ears, and a burning sensation at the back of his throat where he desperately tried not to cry. He hadn't felt this bad since before he had graduated the academy, and he knew what was causing it.

The stupid 'Instant Family' pot had been bugging him since he had bought it. Whereas Naruto would normally jump into things like this without a second thought, something told him to think more carefully about this.

Sure, he had wanted a family for as long as he could remember, probably for as long as he had lived. From his vantage point on the yondaime's head, Naruto could see the indistinct shapes of parents and children walking the streets below. But Naruto was, and he hated to admit it, scared. What if they didn't accept him for who he was? What if they thought the same of him as the villagers did? Families were supposed to love each other unconditionally, but there was no way of predicting if a family that came out of a ramen pot would follow the normal family rules.

All that Naruto knew about his family was that they had been killed in the Kyuubi attack. That was all that old man hokage would tell him, and when he had asked Kakashi, he had gotten an odd look and an "I never knew your parents." In his mind, they were brave and strong, heroes of Konoha, but what if in reality they were drunkards, or nasty like the men who had used to chase Naruto when he was younger?

What if they didn't love him? That was what Naruto was scared of the most.

He had known that it was going to be a long day and he wasn't in the mood for human contact, so he had created a clone to take his place for a day instead. He justified it to himself by telling himself that he was training and discovering his limits. He had never tried to see how long he could make a single shadow clone last before.

By the evening he could feel a change in his chakra levels. He was stiff from sitting in the same position for hours on end, and he was _starving_, but he couldn't bring himself to move yet. He felt oddly peaceful up here. The time had slipped away and before he knew it, the sun was low in the sky.

By the next morning, he was really tired. He could feel it like a deep ache in his bones, but he still kept up the clone. 'I don't have to see anyone yet,' he had thought, although he was wondering how the clone itself was faring by now. Did it feel the same lack of energy as him?

The clone itself had next to no chakra and had fallen back asleep after getting dressed for training. Unable to move, it had lapsed into a deep slumber - and that was how Kakashi had found it when he went to Naruto's apartment.

At 1pm, on top of the monument, Naruto passed out from chakra exhaustion. Alone in a hospital bed, the clone poofed out of existence.

But Naruto had made up his mind. In three days from now, it would be his birthday.

He would use the Instant Family pot then.

**A/N - This chapter came out a little bit angstier than intended XD Well, it's been a long day, and the heat is melting me.**

**Silly Naruto. He's really gotten Kakashi worried. I think I did an ok job of writing Kakashi, but Naruto seemed a little OOC here. Sorry.**

**Please review! *shakes tin* I love knowing what people think of my stories.**


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